Apr.10

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

Trump Campaign Is Getting Nervous about Radical Fu**ing Kennedy

Yesterday, we had an item about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. campaign staffer Rita Palma, who proudly declared that the main purpose of the whole thing is to prevent Joe Biden's reelection. Turns out, per a report from CNN yesterday, she was also a participant in the 1/6 insurrection.

Meanwhile, Kennedy himself can't quite decide what his views on 1/6 actually are. He claimed that the e-mail that went out under his name, calling the convicted 1/6 participants "activists" who had been "stripped of their Constitutional liberties," was a mistake and did not reflect his personal feelings. However, last week, he also said that, if elected president, he would appoint a special counsel to study whether the insurrectionists were unfairly convicted, and that he would consider pardoning them. And at various times in the past couple of weeks, Junior's said that the incident has been overblown, that the "protesters" did not carry weapons (false) and that what happened certainly does not qualify as an insurrection. He also shared his view that the real story of 1/6 is the "weaponization of the federal government." Note, incidentally, that he said these things to different outlets at different times, so it's not like he simply misspoke once, or he was having a bad day, or he misheard a question.

At this point, we have noted several times that the more that Kennedy sounds like a Donald Trump clone, the more likely he takes more votes out of Trump's hide than Biden's. If a Democratic-allied super PAC starts running ads with Kennedy stating his belief that vaccines are harmful, that will pull in the anti-vaxxers, most of whom would probably otherwise vote for Trump. It would appear that the Republican Party, the Trump campaign, and their media mouthpieces have noticed the same thing. And so, a full-on GOP assault on Junior is commencing:

• The RNC, which regularly distributes lists of talking points to prominent Republicans, has put together a whole memo on Kennedy. It describes him as a "far-left Democrat," "an energy radical who wants to end fossil fuels," a conspiracy theorist, and someone who has "embraced the Democrat agenda." Each of these points is supported with illustrative examples; the conspiracy theorist section, for example, charges the candidate with COVID-related conspiracy theories, with believing that wi-fi causes cancer and vaccines cause autism, with advocating the notion that past presidential elections were "stolen" by the supposed "winner," and with accusing the CIA of killing his uncle John. We must admit, we did not know that these kinds of conspiracy theories were disqualifying for a Republican. Guess Donald Trump can't be the Party's presidential candidate, either.
  
  
• The staff of The Bulwark, which is in touch with various activist elements of the MAGA movement, has received intelligence that a group of pro-Trump activists are planning to launch a campaign called "Radical Fu**ing Kennedy," which will highlight stories of RFK Jr.'s alleged liberal past.
  
  
• Trump allies in the right-wing media have spent the last week slamming RFK Jr., and some of them have banned Kennedy from further appearances on their shows. Leading the way here is Sean Hannity, who welcomed the candidate on his show numerous times, but now lambastes him as a "devout, radical environmentalist."

This is mostly interesting to us because it backs up our notion that RFK Jr. is becoming more a threat to Trump than to Biden. We don't think these Republican efforts are going to torpedo Kennedy's campaign. Our guess is that the candidate will do that all by himself. (Z)